


"don't worry about me."

by clickingkeyboards



Series: one hundred ways to say 'i love you' [31]
Category: Murder Most Unladylike Series - Robin Stevens
Genre: Coming Out, Flirting, Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-01
Updated: 2019-12-01
Packaged: 2021-02-26 00:41:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,385
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21634552
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/clickingkeyboards/pseuds/clickingkeyboards
Summary: Bertie Wells accosts who he considers the most intelligent man at Cambridge about an idiotic idea.Canon EraWritten for the thirty-first prompt in the '100 ways to say "I love you"' prompt list by p0ck3tf0x on Tumblr.
Relationships: Harold Mukherjee/Bertie Wells
Series: one hundred ways to say 'i love you' [31]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1533164
Kudos: 23





	"don't worry about me."

Typically, the statement ‘don’t worry about me’ precedes Bertie Wells being a  _ fucking moron _ .

“What idiocy have you curated this time, Wells?” I ask, snapping my head up the moment Bertie walks into the Mauldin College library.

“I didn’t even  _ open my mouth _ , Mukherjee,” he says, looking rather offended. “What makes you think I’ve done something?”

“You about to do something,” I correct, setting my fountain pen down beside my history essay on the failings of King George III and locking eyes with Bertie Wells.

For the first time, I notice in the low light how astonishingly sky-blue his eyes are. I do not use the term without thorough analysis: it looks as if somebody has captured the cloudless blue skies of early September and trapped them inside his eyes. Though the colour is cold and can be terribly nasty — I have seen his frosty glares that could freeze over the Atlantic ocean — they are also astonishingly kind, warm when he looks at me.

“Why are you in there?” he asks me, still rather loud and across the landing.

“The heating has failed in St. John’s, it’s most irritating.”

“We’ve an idea,” he says, striding over and setting his hands on the table I’m sitting at, leaning over me in a way that would almost be leering if it was not for his blinding smile. His blond hair is tousled from the wind and his hair rushing through it, and his eyes are brightened by his turquoise neckerchief. Bertie Wells is the embodiment of an aesthete. My younger brother says that I am too, but my younger brother is awfully silly. Rather, he is so serious that it is silly: he and his very best friend are running about with ideas about being  _ detectives _ , and George has rather insisted to me that Alexander helped solve a  _ murder _ over the mid-spring break (the one where Christian people celebrate Jesus not dying, as far as I understand).

“I’m terrified,” I reply in a deadpan tone.

“Oh,  **don’t worry about me** !” In a terrible display against Weston behaviour — though he attended Eton and that is not surprising to me, as they are all savages — he pushes my essay out of the way and hops up onto the table. “Well, Alfred reckons that we can ‘bungee jump’ from the window of Donald’s rooms. We've procured some stretchy cord. It’s helpful with climbing, you know. We were wondering if you could help us.”

“What… what measurements have you got drawn out?” I ask, realising that I cannot say  _ no _ to Bertie Wells, no matter how much I think he is a  _ fucking moron _ .

“I’m glad you asked!” He takes a piece of paper out of his terribly aesthetic waistcoat, unfolding it and holding it up to the light.

“You need glasses,” I tell him, like I have been telling him since I met him.

“Then I would lose my treasured nickname.”

“Which  _ is _ ?”

With a rueful smile, he says, “My sister calls me Squinty.”

“She has a damn point, Wells.”

Laughing, he says, “You are so serious, Mukherjee. Is it a thing where you’re from?”

“London?”

“Oh.” He pauses and pinches the bridge of his nose. “I am so sorry. I was given quite a rigorous lesson in this by my dear sister, in assuming things about people that are not white. I’ve been making an effort but I know that is not enough.”

“Thank you.” Bertie Wells is the only person that would ever think to apologise for that assumption.

“Look here. We measured the distance between the window and the ground so we need a few inches less than that much stretching cord and I—”

“How the  _ fuck _ did you get into Cambridge, Wells?” I leap from my seat and grab him by one shoulder. “Look at it this way: the cord stretches, yes? That means it will get longer. So if you use an amount of stretching cord that is roughly equal to the distance between the window and the ground, the cord will  _ stretch  _ and you will rocket into the ground and die.”

The silence is electric, and then Bertie Wells cracks up laughing. “Crikey!” he exclaims, wheezing out a gasp and leaning his head against my shoulder. “What would we do without you around here, Mukherjee?”

“You would die,” I tell him, expecting him to take off out of the room with his new calculations.

Instead, he grabs my sleeve and I feel the chill from his long, pianists fingers that sinks through my shirt and into my skin. “How would you like to climb, Harold?”

“I should like it very much, but you have heard the words that fall from Chummy Melling’s mouth. How are you friends with someone who spews such disgusting rhetoric?”

He looks to his feet. “You see… well. You know what happened to me at Easter, with my family. The Mellings were the people who dragged me up again to a reasonable status, they are the people who funded me through the trial and helped me be able to send money to my younger sister at school so she can invest it in those things schoolgirls are so insistent about, tuck box feasts and, in her case, murder mystery novels and fingerprinting kits. I owe them. I know that is not how friendship is supposed to work but it is how friendship works with Chummy. I am stuck with him because every time I try to free myself, he draws me back in with whispered assurances that he could ruin my family once again. He knows… he knows  _ something _ that could indeed do that so unless somebody does me the courtesy of murdering him, I am stuck by his side.”

I freeze. I could never have guessed that the Honourable Albert Wells was being… manipulated. By one of the Melling twins, too! How awful, this boy who has become my dear friend being under such a spell because somebody was evil enough to help him get back on his feet after the most awful family scandal, only to turn around and whisper promises of ruining and family and harming a sister he is trying to keep afloat if he ever distances himself from them.

“Oh, you—” Then I do something most un-Weston-like: I throw my arms around his shoulders. “How dare he do that to you?”

“Don’t come near me,” he says and takes a step back. “You will not like to be near me once I tell you exactly what leverage he has over me.”

I withdraw sharply. “Wells— I mean, Bertie— what is wrong? I swear to the god you are so intent on believing in that I’m sure it’s nothing so terrible.”

Looking left and right to check that the library is void of students, he says, “I’m homosexual.”

“And I am supposed to care?” I ask, surprised that I am even letting myself say that. “I… I mean, of course I care but not in the way you believe. What can I do for you? Who do I need to speak to, what can I say to Chummy, to stop you being so trapped by him knowing this?”

“You…” He pauses and presses a hand rather roughly over his face. “I… you don’t care?”

“I don’t  _ mind _ .” With the poor judgement that George constantly berates — perhaps he has a point — I reach out and take his hand in my own. “Here, Wells. What can I do?”

“Come climbing with me tomorrow.”

“With you and the Mellings? The only thing that would make it bearable is Alfred Cheng!”

“No.” He points to the date at the top of my essay. “It’s the fourth today and the fifth tomorrow. Nobody is climbing tomorrow, Mukherjee. They’re all out watching the fireworks.”

“You and I?” I ask in shock.

“Oi, Bertie!” Alfred Cheng bellows from the door, and we leap apart. Not that he can see us from where we are.

“Alfred!” He waves Alfred over and I sit back down at my table. “Look here, Harold figured out something that we were being right idiots about.”

Alfred takes one look at the paper and laughs. “Crikey! Fantastic work here, Mukherjee. Come on, Bertie, we have some rope to cut.”

Bertie turns back to me and mouths, “Tomorrow?”

I nod.


End file.
